A Matter of Mercy (8 page)

The main topic for Tomas was raising money. “I don’t think you two are adequately aware of how far this may go. The retainer is just the beginning.” Tomas had gone into his children’s college fund for his share. So far, his wife was with him, but the children came first for her. Tomas didn’t think Marie would be willing to follow him into a hole. “If we don’t fight it, obviously we lose everything. But we may lose everything anyway, because it may take all we’ve got and more. That’s why we’ve got to decide now exactly how far we’re willing to take this.” Tomas spoke in his patient, cultured voice, usually looking at Mario.

For Rid, the issue was trying to keep Tomas from giving up on a joint defense because Mario was such a wildcard. Mario had more money than he did, and he was hoping that Mario would advance some of his share until he could come up with it. There was a question in his mind—probably in Tomas’ mind too—about the source of Mario’s money. They all had side jobs; they had to. Tomas and Marie ran a bait shop with Marie’s brother in Eastham. Some cut and sold firewood, or jumped on a scallop or shrimp boat out of New Bedford for a week or ten days, which would bring in a quick couple of thousand extra in the winter. Rid had done both, depending on the year.

It wasn’t impossible that Mario ran some drugs. He reminded Rid of himself ten years ago, which ran up a red flag or two. But there wasn’t room to worry about that. For one, he and Tomas needed the money, for all of Tomas’ talk about going it alone. And Rid had more than enough to worry about. He
should
have been home repairing cages. He hadn’t fixed all the damage from the hurricane tail swipe last month, and winter was coming on. There was no way he should have been sitting on a bar stool.

It was mid-October. The summer tourists were long gone, and it was the local fishers and year-rounder business people in the restaurant. The fishermen were in the bar; the tide had been at five-fifteen and had run them into darkness. Most had come in for a drink right off their grants. On the other side, the restaurant served a couple celebrating an anniversary, a lone man in a suit, a smattering of nondescript others. The bar, as usual on weeknights, was the heartbeat of The Reading Oyster, which was the heartbeat of the town, especially in the off-season.

The restaurant was named for the dark and dusty bookstore at its rear, crammed with ancient paperbacks and magazines and rare books, some suspended over string along the beamed ceiling, many stacked precariously along the narrow aisles. Old, yellowing movie posters were tacked to any wall space not covered with shelves from which old, random books tumbled, here and there an astonishing treasure surrounded by garage-quality junk. The family that owned the restaurant kept the bookstore in operation a few hours a day, not that there were many customers, because it was the collection of their ancient patriarch, who sat guard at the antiquated cash register by the door. Maybe it also kept him out of the restaurant, where he’d be in their way.

Even the bar was slow tonight. Or it was slow now, at seven thirty, because most everyone had come, had their after-tide beer and gone on home to work on their nets or cages or, in the unlikely event that they were caught up with those, to struggle with the paper work. Cash out and cash in was always best. It all used to be under the table, but things were changing, regulations being enacted, inspection procedures becoming more and more rigorous, put in place faster than some of them could keep up. Federal HACCP—Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point—regulation, with its boatload of rules controlled every single clam and oyster if you wanted to deal wholesale, and the damn rules so complicated the government made you pay to take their class.

Rid, Tomas and Mario were still on their stools. They weren’t drunk, nor were they entirely sober, except for Tomas who never showed beer anyway, even after five or six. Tonight he’d had only three. All of them ordered sandwiches, Rid and Mario mainly so they could keep drinking, and Tomas to keep them all sober enough to stay on track.

“Look,” Tomas said. “It’s money now or money later. If we lose our grants we’re out our income and everything we’ve invested. Or even short term—remember, he
could
get a restraining order. We’re got to stop pissing and moaning and focus. That’s the point. Or we fold now.” The last was rhetorical. They all reiterated regularly that they weren’t giving up their lives and livelihood, but Tomas still brought it up as an option.

Mario banged his fist on the table. “Why us? Why not the others?” His face was red, a bit bleary in the semi-darkness of the bar, but Rid recognized it as Mario’s pent-up anger as much as the beer.

Tomas sighed.

As much to intervene as because he thought it was actually workable, Rid said, “Maybe we could ask all the others to help us out. With the money. You know, make a case that they’re all in danger, too. ’Cause if Pissario wins, then the upland owners above them, hell, they’re all likely to just say, hey, that’s my land you’re on, I want you off, or I want sixty percent of everything you pick off my land. Whatever. I mean, isn’t Pissario setting precedent? They could all be laying back, letting Pissario absorb the cost of the first suit, and if he wins, then they pounce.”

“Yeah,” Mario said, “that’s what I’m getting at,” although, of course, he hadn’t been. His cap was on forward tonight, with the bill bent up and back.

Tomas closed his eyes a moment and rubbed his chin. “That’s good. That’s good. We should be able to make that argument,” and Rid was as pleased with himself as he’d been since the one A he’d gotten in high school. Over behind the bar, glassware clinked as Billy hung them in the overhead rack, pretending he wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. Usually the bartender wasn’t too bad about spreading gossip, but doubtless this topic was too hot to resist. Probably Billy had leaned so far over the bar he’d caught his earring in a barstool. Rid wished he’d paid more attention to making sure they weren’t overheard. Mario, especially, barked like a damn seal when he got going. The last thing they needed was for it to get around that they were going to ask for money before they had a chance to do it themselves.

“We’ve never organized,” Tomas sighed again and shrugged one shoulder under the strap of his overalls. It was a strangely delicate movement for his hefty frame, and out of character, too. “Too independent a bunch, and I suppose if any of us had wanted to work with anyone else we wouldn’t be working the flats in the first place. But okay. We’ve got to start somewhere. So we see if we can get everyone to contribute something. Everyone with a grant on Indian Neck. Maybe we should go beyond Indian Neck. Hell, maybe Mayo Beach area? All the aquaculturists in Wellfleet, even. This law affects the economy of the region, after all.”

“Okay, how we gonna do this? We just each of us talk to who we know best, and—” Mario shoved his cap back further on his head and plunged in.

Tomas interrupted. “Slow down. Let’s be organized about how we approach this. Different arguments will appeal to different people. Let me think about this and let’s assign each of us to talk to certain people. This is akin to forming a union.” He made eye contact with Mario. “Listen to me. Do
not
say a word to anyone. We don’t want a half-baked plan leaking out, and we sure as hell don’t want it getting to the upland owners, who might decide to get together and help Pissario. The tide’s at six forty-nine tomorrow night—we’ll only be able to use the front side of it. How about we meet here about seven-fifteen, maybe a little earlier? All right?” He was already shoving his seat back from the high table, putting his arm in the sleeve of his windbreaker, but as he did he again looked at Mario hard.

“Sure,” Rid answered with a head gesture to Mario, pulling him into agreement with Tomas’ proposal.

“Yeah, I guess,” from Mario.

A half-hour later, Rid had hardly unloaded the truck and gotten into the house when the phone rang. He answered it on the run, switching on lights as he passed them.

“You and I have to handle this ourselves,” Tomas’ voice came through the receiver. “Mario isn’t the person to be talking to people about this. He doesn’t inspire confidence.”

“I thought that’s what you might be thinking.” Rid slumped into his recliner, wishing he’d had time to get a beer out of the refrigerator before he’d answered the phone. Lizzie curled into a circle on her bed next to him, their television watching posts. “What do you want me to do?”

“Manage him or distract him. We can’t have him making threats or inciting people, and we can’t have him—”

“I know.”

“I’m not saying I don’t care about Mario but I’m not going to let him take us down.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“Okay. I’ll figure out a list tonight dividing who I’ll talk to and who you cover.”

A mackerel sky was just brightening over the steely morning tide when Rid bumped his truck off the access road. Most of his grant was exposed already, but he’d had to wait until it was light enough to work. He was glad only two other trucks, Barb’s and Clint’s, were out on the flats. He hadn’t figured out just how to handle Mario yet, and he needed to get his digging done while he thought things though. His cages, rake and buckets rattled in the truck bed while Lizzie rode shotgun, her head out the passenger side window, sniffing the wind, ears flapping like flags. Rid took a long swallow of the coffee he’d picked up at the Cumberland Farms store on Route Six and made a face. It was old. Usually he made a thermos at home, but this morning he’d been hurried and distracted. Already this damn lawsuit was affecting everything, sucking up what he loved. Like right now, a morning tide was usually when he reveled in his life—the sun coming up soft on the water, the birds coming to work, too—and him there, outside, free, grateful. Grateful
because
he was free, he guessed. Now, here he was instead all worked up and worried, trying to figure out how to deal with frigging crazy Mario, who shouldn’t be his problem.

The truth was, he didn’t see her huddled on the revetment, the rock wall the upland owners had built to keep the sea water from eroding the sandy cliff during storms when the tides could run exceptionally high. Most of them had their own wooden stairways built up from the beach, too, some even with a platform built halfway up where they could put folding chairs and have drinks as if the fancy tiers and decks and sliding patio doors on their mansions overlooking the bay weren’t enough. It was Lizzie, with her typical enthusiasm for any potential playmate, bounding out of the truck to where CiCi sat. Rid actually didn’t recognize her at first; she had a sweatshirt hood up, for one, and it had, after all, been weeks since the one time he’d seen her. A flush of guilt washed over him, then defensiveness, then wariness. But he had to intervene. Lizzie was leaping at CiCi, her tail a blur, and Rid knew her tongue was flashing at CiCi’s face by the woman’s ineffective swipes at her own cheek with one hand as she tried to hold Lizzie down.

“Off, girl,” Rid called, slamming the truck door and breaking into a reluctant jog toward them. “Get back to the truck. Hey, hi, I’m sorry. She’s not even supposed to be out of the truck,” he added as he caught up and grabbed Lizzie’s collar. This was the last thing he needed. A woman he’d slept with and never called again who could technically be considered one of the waterfront landowners, and here was his dog loose on a private beach molesting her. Could it get worse? And dammit, he needed to get to work, and he needed to figure out how to lock Mario in a box.

“No problem.” At least she was laughing. But she looked terrible, charcoal thumbprints under her eyes. She’d put makeup on, he could see, and her hair was fixed, he could tell that now that she’d flipped the hood back. Still, her face was almost gaunt, as if hollows had been spooned out.

“She’s just over-friendly. I thought she’d grow out of it, but she’s almost six and I can’t hardly call that a puppy anymore. Just acts it. What’re you doing here?”

“I brought you some coffee,” she said. “I didn’t know how you liked it, so I brought creamer and sugar in plastic bags.” Sure enough, behind her, standing on one of the boulders was a thermos. She pulled two bags out of her gray sweatshirt pocket as she said it, and took two awkward sidesteps over to lay them next to the thermos.

“Thanks. I usually bring a thermos myself. Didn’t have time this morning so I stopped at Cumberland. Got it already.” It sounded just on the line of rude, but he was uncomfortable. What did she want? Then he remembered. “Your mother, she didn’t…?”

“Not yet. Thank you for asking.”

“Um, well, thanks anyway. I should be getting to work. Was there something you needed?”

He could see she was stung. But what did she want? The tide wouldn’t wait for him, and Lizzie pulled and squirmed trying to get away. “I’m sorry, please excuse me, but I’ve got to get her back in the truck. Come on girl.” Rid released the collar and strode to where his truck was parked on the wet flats, the Lab prancing back and forth and around him. Cultch snapped and crunched beneath his waders. CiCi couldn’t follow him. She was only wearing sneakers.

Impossibly, she did, though. Her feet had to be getting wet, no matter how gingerly she picked her way trying to avoid the eddies and go from one high spot to the next. In another minute she’d be onto a raceway and then she’d tear a net.

“Hold up. I’ll be right back.” Rid help up a hand in a stop sign gesture behind him.

He opened the driver’s side door of the truck. Lizzie hesitated, her pleading expression on her face. Rid pulled a biscuit from his shirt pocket, pointing to the seat with his chin, and the dog immediately leapt inside. “You have a good nap, girl. Keep my spot warm.” The Lab took the treat from his hand and he caressed her ears before shutting the truck door and turning back to where CiCi stood as if rooted where he’d stopped her. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. He had too much on his mind this morning to worry about an ex-prom queen jailbird looking for a soul mate.

“Didn’t want you to walk over the netting,” he explained as he approached her. “I’m sorry, I don’t have time to visit just now. I gotta use the tide, y’know?

“I understand. I know about the lawsuit, too, and I was just wondering if we could get together sometime, to talk.”

Rid stiffened. What the hell did she want, this soon-to-be waterfront landowner? Maybe he was spoiling
her
view, too.

“Yeah. Well, I’m pretty busy with this right now.”

The sky was lightening and beneath his feet the sand was draining. Almost dead low.

She looked down. “I thought maybe I could help. And I wanted to talk to you.”

“No thanks.” Tomas’ injunction was still ringing in his head. He was treating her like a washashore, which was ridiculous because she was native. He had no reason to assume she’d think of her hometown as a postcard rather than a working place—that she’d try to take that away. But she’d left, and only come back when she had to. That made her suspect.

CiCi’s head snapped up, startled, her eyes rounded like targets. “No thanks what?” Her bangs blew the wrong way in the wind and she held them out of her eyes with one hand which made her forehead look high and bald. Behind her, the revetment was solid, unyielding, a wall of carefully fitted boulders rising at a steep slope. Random loose rocks lay embedded in the sand around the high water mark. When the tide was full, there was virtually no beach here.

Rid met her eyes, not backing down. Again, he noticed she looked haggard in spite of the makeup, and felt himself soften. She must be going through hell with her mother. He was being a prick. But there was Tomas’s truck just then, jostling over the rough patch from the access road onto the beach and it fortified him to stay the course. Too much was at stake.

“No thanks, I don’t need help. And I’m sorry, I just don’t have time to talk. I’ll try to give you a call sometime. Uh, thanks for the offer.” He turned then and walked between two raceways, grabbing his bull rake and several buckets out of the bed of his truck as he passed it. October was a big harvest month. He needed to dig six hundred fifty oysters and four hundred clams for two weddings and a small raw bar today. And deal with Mario, plus whatever Tomas assigned him. Enough was enough.

* * * * 

She’d made a fool of herself. Her feet were wet and here she was carrying the untouched thermos of coffee. He’d blown her off. Whatever had she been thinking? Hadn’t she been humiliated adequately the first time, when she’d been pathetic enough to stand out on the porch and call out after him? He’d kept right on going then, hadn’t he? So why had she expected anything else? Or hoped.

On the other hand, at least she’d tried. It made the decision to have an abortion easier, really.

Caroline looked up from the cultch-strewn sand just ahead to her mother’s house in the middle distance. The horseshoe cove was fully drained now, the tide all the way out. How could she be this exhausted from walking over to Rid’s grant and halfway back? It couldn’t be a half-mile round trip, and only some of it had been in soft sand. She had to pee desperately, otherwise she’d just go lie down hidden up by the beach plums and scrubby wild vegetation that scalloped the beach between the access road and where the revetment began its steep ascent.

She stopped just to breathe. Then she swung and walked backward for a moment to have the wind at her back. All up and down Indian Neck, trucks were parked like giant beetles on the sand and the detritus of the sea farmers was uncovered, the stacked oyster cages and Chinese hats, a couple of dinghies and random buckets. The farmers themselves were out in force. They must have been arriving steadily while her back was turned. Caroline felt a quick stab of guilt. He’d said he had to work. Possibly she had been keeping him, like when she used to waitress and a friend would drop by and expect her to be to stand and chat. Still, that didn’t explain his coldness. That was something else entirely.

She turned back and faced into the wind, forcing one foot in front of the other, infuriated by the sting of the air, how it made her eyes water so.

And she’d had no business leaving the house. Eleanor was awake when Caroline came in, though she’d eased the door open as silently as possible, shrugging out the sweatshirt off, then the layer beneath it before she even went over to the bed. She’d been that certain her mother wouldn’t rouse until the hospice aide showed up to bathe her and do catheter care. But when she tiptoed bedside, Eleanor’s eyes fluttered open.

“Where were you?”

“Oh Mom, I’m so sorry. I just took a short walk. Are you all right?”

“My baby.” Eleanor’s eyes closed and for a moment Caroline thought perhaps she’d only awakened momentarily. But then she moved her hand, feeling for Caroline. “My baby. How can I leave you like this, with no one of your own?”

Caroline sank into the chair that was always at the head of her mother’s bed. She kissed the hand she held, and set her head down in the hollow between her mother’s shoulder and breast wanting nothing more than to climb in and have both her mother’s arms close around her. Caroline was, at first, just trying to hide the tears of frustration with Rid, and what lay ahead. Then her mother’s hand was on her head without the strength to stroke her hair, but there. How many times had this soft place been her shelter? Then she was crying, really crying, for the first time, over the looming unchosen death.

“Don’t leave me, Mom. Please,
please
don’t leave me.”